News Post

The only constant is change.  Especially when it comes to Microsoft Office.  Many lawyers and firms have now upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007, which is why the recent release of The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft® Word 2007 is such welcome news.

Ben Schorr, the Hawaii-based law office technology consultant and Microsoft MVP, previously hit one out of the park with The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007.  And now he’s back with another home run with his new book, The Lawyer’s Guide to Microsoft Word 2007.

Recently published by the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, this book is all you need to help you get the most from Word 2007.  For those who have already taken advantage of Ben’s last book, his easy, conversational style that makes the complex – well – just plain simple, will come as no surprise.  If you haven’t yet read one of Ben’s books, you’re in for a treat.

This one starts off with a quick tour of what’s different about Word 2007.  By the time you finish this chapter, you’ll have a great overview of all the things that Word 2007 can do – many of which you may never have discovered in earlier versions.  The following chapters take you through the process of creating a basic document, and then provide you with everything you need to know to obtain the formatting you want with ease, whether it’s fonts, headers and footers, page numbers or tables of information.

There’s also a chapter on features of special interest to lawyers, such as tables of authority, tables of content, and electronic filing, and chapters on collaboration (think: comparing document versions, among other things), using third-party document management systems, and dealing with metadata.  And the chapter on automating Word is so full of tips and tricks for saving time and making your work easier that it, alone, is probably worth the price of the book.

If you’d like to check out the bar’s library copy, email Kristi Skipper at kristi.skipper@alabar.org, or you can purchase a copy of your very own – at a discount, no less – through the bar’s automated bookstore.   You won’t be sorry you did!